A Surprising Lack of Unbaptized Babies: A Review of Limbo

I remember trying out the demo for Limbo back when it was getting rave reviews, and being fairly impressed with the demo itself, but all of the reviews were saying that while it was a great game, the price point was a bit steep for the limited amount of content you got. I therefore decided to wait until the hopeful day that the game dropped for a more reasonable price point. However, I was saved from this by the Spirit of Christmas!... or more particularly, Matt's gift of the game to me. I sat down in the lull before finals to play it, and roughly 5-6 hours later, came to pretty much the same conclusion as most of the other reviewers.

First off is the most obvious thing about the game, that of the graphics and the general atmospherics the game manages to create. They really are quite striking and pretty, and give a great feel to the game. I've seen a lot of screenshots for the game, and all of them sort of capture the very well realized game world that the developers managed to create.

The game quite honestly has a feel that rivals games like Bioshock and Braid, making it instantly recognizable and evoking a lot of emotions. Some of the scenes managed to be more unsettling than even  many movies I've seen, particularly the segments involving the spider from the second picture. It's been getting mentioned a lot as a prime example of the "games as art" movement, and I can definitely see where the proponents are coming from. 

The game is pretty much a standard puzzle/platformer hybrid from the actual game perspective, but a well-polished and design one. While the puzzles are not nearly as devilish and complicated as Braid, for instance, they still require a lot of though in some places, and are quite interesting in that since you only have a jump and grab button, they require either careful timing or using the environment in creative ways. I got the chance to watch Kory play through the game, and it was interesting to note which puzzles he had difficulty with that I didn't, and vice versa, and how often they didn't match up. There was only one puzzle that I felt was "stupid" and was due to poor design and not because I was failed to see something, which is actually a fairly impressive error rate.

The only real complaint I can bring against the game is that as the game progressed, especially towards the end, the puzzles tend to be much more timing-based and unforgiving rather than clever manipulation. While there's nothing wrong with that, they feel a bit more stereotypical, like something you'd get in a Mario game, rather than the really creative puzzles you get earlier on. There's not so many to be overwhelming, but I would have preferred it had the last section been a difficult puzzle rather than dodging a series of deadly traps. In addition, the ending is very vague and relies on seeing a difference title screen between before beating the game and after beating it--but if you played like I did, and beat the game in two sittings, you wouldn't have seen that title screen enough times to notice the difference, and it took Matt telling me to figure it out. 

I can also see how a 6 hour game is not quite worth $15, but as I was gifted it I personally have no right to complain; it's a fantastic little game for what it is, and I definitely recommend it if you either get a chance to play, or it drops to around the $5 price point somewhere in the future.

-HTMC